Recent content by Dr Jack

Sorry, we seem to have our wires crossed - I was talking about the company making the game not the money going to WotC. Yeah, losing Larian from a future BG is a significant blow to WotC.

Right, but because of Larian, and the quality and success of BG3, Balder's Gate has gone from being a dormant brand, remembered fondly by a small niche of the gaming world to a top title. That brand will carry the next title to strong sales regardless of whether it is anywhere near as good...

Honestly, I'd expect any BG4 game to shift blockbuster number of units just on the reputation of BG3. It's basically a license to print money for any company that takes it on right now.

I guess I'd just call that "historical setting". I consider alt-history to be when you have changed the background before the time of the campaign starting to make things substantially different. No point arguing about such semantics though :) Fair enough, then my ideas wouldn't suit you. I...

Is alt-history an option for you? I think that would be my first choice.

I'd certainly agree there's no perfect solution. As you say even if I created an ideal system for my table and my players; your table and your players would get a different balance from it. But I do think there are games that do it better or worse than other games; and I also think that games...

I do like WFRP's random generation, but I like it for the random careers more than I like it for the random stats. The way the randomness in stats works is more something that it gets away with than something it benefits from. Although mismatch between starting career and stats can also be...

Yeah, I wasn't very clear there. Sorry. What I mean is any kind of character gen system that involves player skill in making a better character. Randomness can be fun. Life path can be fun. But they should be about creating interesting characters rather than creating characters with higher or...

Am I the only one who thinks that all kinds of character gen minigames are a terrible idea? Whether it's character optimisation or push-your-luck games, what they ultimately achieve is making the game when it happens less fun, and making the experience for newer players worse.

I think a lot of the games mentioned were never really intended to be forever games. Unlike games like Traveller, D&D, or GURPS; games like Band of Blades, My Life With Master, or even Blades in the Dark are intended to be games that you experience and then go and play something else. Their...

Still a great game, but it really needed a second edition to clean up the jank and that doesn't seem likely now.

I put time and effort into persuading players not to bring snacks all the time. We do this every week, I don't need to stuff my face with junk food. I also used to do soup every week when we played in person, and one of the players would get charged with bringing bread to go with it. Soup turns...

This is like the perfect opposite of how I like to run games.

The ideal is the same as for offline play: 4 is best, but 3 is okay. But unlike offline play, 5 is just too many.

I'm kind of baffled by the idea of choosing GURPs of all systems to run a Discworld game with. It almost makes me curious enough to pick it up.